I am the owner of multiple colors of hard hats and hi-vis vests. You're going to want to get an orange/yellow bucket. These are the ones that crew wear. I.e. the people that don't know what's actually happening, they're just "doing their job". Don't get white or any other color because those mean you know what's happening and shouldn't be working.
TIL there are colour-coded helmets on worksites. Makes sense, I suppose. If you need a first aider or something it's probably easier to look for a particular colour helmet than just Jim.
A lot of the time you don't even know Jim, never met him. So wearing the hat for what your job is let's people know who to ask for what without everyone needing to know each other.
I don't know everyone on my job sites wear white wide rimmed helmets and the crew owners typically wear the grey carbon fiber helmets, but then again we're mostly electricians.
I used to work next to a homeless shelter, and I got harassed by the homeless every day, I was threatened, chased, and I got mugged twice. I’m very uncomfortable around the homeless now.
Enabling the homeless to sleep in public spaces like park benches and in front of businesses doesn’t make them safer. It creates more conflict for them, leaves them exposed (to people and the elements), and worsens how the community sees them.
If you want to help, donate to your local shelters, missions, and food banks, or volunteer, and campaign for better treatment of them.
Don’t misguidedly create harmful situations like this. How do you think Joe cop is going to react seeing public benches “modified” and a homeless person sleeping there?
Enabling the homeless to sleep in public spaces like park benches and in front of businesses doesn’t make them safer. It creates more conflict for them, leaves them exposed (to people and the elements), and worsens how the community sees them.
And taking away the littlest comfort of not having to sleep on the cold floor next to the bench solves this how?
The only effective thing to do is get parties voted that enable general social safety. In countries where people don't starve when they don't have a job criminality is much lower.
The American public generally supports the kinds of policies we see in "good socialist" countries like the Netherlands, but our voting and representation system has locked in a right and far-right party. We're going to have to get Approval Voting and Proportional Representation installed via referendum if we want the elected officials to actually represent the will of the people.
Exactly. Here in the Netherlands, we have maaaaany social programs to help the homeless, people with mental issues and addiction issues. Problem is, a lot of them don’t WANT that help. They’d rather continue their way of life.
Here’s the thing: their rights end where mine begin. And as a normal, tax-paying citizen I deserve a safe, attractive place to live. Without the risk of being assaulted, mugged or worse.
I fully support comprehensive social programs to help the homeless. But if they don’t want that help, well, that’s on them.
I agree, there’s a balance. I don’t think criminalizing homelessness is a good policy, but I also don’t like situations I’ve seen where homeless people take over parks, block sidewalks, or turn a whole street into a ghetto hellhole with burnt out abandoned RVs and trash. I understand these people are in dire straits but it’s not fair to deny everyone else use of public spaces like parks. A group of 20-25 people basically occupied a park near where I live in Denver for two weeks until the city finally kicked them out - ringed it with RVs, broken down cars, trash and debris, people sleeping on picnic tables, noise and commotion at night, open drug and alcohol use. Another thing is that wouldn't have been tolerated in the higher income areas of the city for even one day, and it is blatantly against park usage laws. I also know people who had situations like a group of random transients came and built a tent shanty directly behind their house in the alley, blocking their gate and parking area, doing a bunch of shady shit with bikes and making noise all night, and the city/police response was “well you should talk to them and ask them to leave”.
It’s amazing to me that the US is at the point where we have shanty towns taking over public areas. Unfortunately, our current solutions are an awful in-between where cities tolerate encampments for a while, then do a “sweep” where they clean the area off, kick everyone out and throw away possessions if people don’t remove them first. Then the people who had been living there just go to a different area of the city and nothing is every really solved.
Yes, I don't want to not help the homeless, helping them resolves most of the issues with them.
But I don't like having run ins with them anymore. I don't like going to parks where they hangout, I don't like having to step over them on the sidewalk, and I'm very happy I no longer work downtown where I was accosted by them regularly. I assume if they had a safer place to they would mostly choose to be there, which is why I try to donate money.
Those types of programs are a minimum bar to do so that we can all have nice things and spaces.
Just remember that if anyone asks, act irritated that you were called in on your day off because the guy who was supposed to do it fell sick, then catch yourself and say "anyway, no time to chat, I got a quota to meet" before grumbling about how you should have listened to your mother.
One of my first jobs -- My wife said I would call her and go on mumble rants for about 10 minutes, and she's talk me down from quitting because we needed the money. It was all a blur, but I remember doing those calls while getting coffee or a sandwich, and always remembering that my orders always came out 100% perfect and really fast.
I was probably annoying AF and workers just wanted to get away from me.
alt text: Picture of a firefighter fighting a forest fire. In the lower right corner is the logo of the company "Shell", subtitled with "Hell" instead. In the middle there's a text: "At least billionaires are getting richer", but the word "billionaires" is replaced with "landlords".
Soooo I’m not defending the bar, nor any of the hostile architecture you see around the world these days to deal with the homeless…..
there’s a cause for it. while 90% of the homeless are decent people getting screwed by the system, that last 10% are drug/severe mental health concerns.
keeping them out of areas for safety is the driving force.
now, i personally think that this is a poor answer and that "better mental health resources" is a far better answer…… i understand why the decision is made.